BBC television and radio broadcaster, frequent contributor to The Nation, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books, historian, film-maker, and author of many books, including The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Tariq Ali was born in Lahore and educated at Oxford University. On graduating he managed his own independent television production company, Bandung, which produced programs for Channel 4 in the UK during the 1980s. He is editorial director of London publisher Verso and is on the board of the New Left Review, for whom he is also an editor. His fiction includes a series of historical novels about Islam: Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree (1992), The Book of Saladin (1998), The Stone Woman (2000) and A Sultan in Palermo (2005). His non-fiction includes 1968: Marching in the Streets (1998), Conversations with Edward Said (2005); Rough Music: Blair, Bombs, Baghdad, London, Terror (2005); Speaking of Empire and Resistance (2005), and Pirates of the Caribbean; Axis of Home (2006).

The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power is his new book. It deals with the current crisis engulfing Pakistan, including the daily battles on the Afghan border, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the abrupt resignation of Musharraf, and the rapidly changing turmoil of the only Islamic state with nuclear weapons. Pakistan is also the likely hideout of Osama bin-Laden.